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As police continued to search for suspects in the Friday shooting of two Toronto teens, family members gathered to mourn one of their friends, 15-year-old Tahj Loor-Walters, who was gunned down last month.

Eulalee Walters stood before her grandson’s casket Saturday in the church where she brought him as a child, and again in the months before he was killed.

“No one can hurt him again. No more hurt,” she said of Loor-Walters, who was shot July 28 in a plaza near Jane St. and Finch Ave. W. He died 17 days later.

“He don’t need to be hiding from anybody because he’s now in the arms of Jesus,” she said.

The grandmother then turned to the murdered teen’s friends, among the hundreds of mourners who filled All Nations Full Gospel Church on Steeles Ave. W., near Hwy. 400.

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“Don’t take (Tahj’s death) lightly,” she said. “Use it as an example to turn your lives around. Put your lives in the hands of Jesus.”

As Loor-Walters’ family buried their boy, police continued canvassing for witnesses at the community housing complex on Grandravine Dr. in North York where O’She Doyles-Whyte, 16, and friend Kwame Duodu, 15, were shot in broad daylight.

Throughout the afternoon, neighbours added new items to a makeshift memorial in front of the home where Duodu and Doyles-Whyte were killed. Where there had been blood and the lifeless bodies of two teenagers, there were now balloons, flowers, candles and two smiling stuffed rabbits.

A boy approached the memorial on his bike, quietly taking in the scene for several minutes while others looked on from afar.

Declining to give his name, the 17-year-old said he had been friends with Doyles-Whyte and Duodu since elementary school. He said he had called Duodu about 15 minutes before the shooting, asking him to send him a video.

“He told me ‘Hold on,’ ” and then when I tried to call him back, he didn’t answer,” he said. “I’m mad. They were nice kids. They were like brothers to me. They weren’t like gangbangers selling drugs. They worked hard for their money. They didn’t deserve this.”

Millicent Nicholson, who lives just a few doors down, was in the kitchen on Friday afternoon when she heard gunshots and a man screaming for someone to call 911.

“I tried to go out to help, but then when I saw so much blood pouring, I just went back to my door and said ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ ” said Nicholson, a friend of the Duodu family, who described the young victim’s mother as a “sweet lady, too sweet to have to go through something like this.”

Police say the victims were good kids with no criminal history.

“These were two young boys enjoying the summer weather,” said Det. Sgt. Terry Browne. “These are not problem kids. This could have been any kid in the city of Toronto.”

Three suspects, also believed to be in their mid-teens, fled on bikes.

Investigators have turned to surveillance cameras mounted throughout the Toronto Community Housing complex, but they are finding gaps where multiple cameras weren’t working.

Police will still get footage they hope will help, just not of the complete complex, Browne said.

The detective said there is nothing immediately linking Friday’s double homicide with Loor-Walters’ shooting, but he will continue checking the case for clues.

In the past six months, five teens have been shot — four fatally — within a one-kilometre radius in the Jane and Finch community. The four teens who are now dead were neighbourhood friends, according to online messages of condolence.

For many at the funeral, they knew Loor-Walters as “Skinny,” an affectionate name for a cherubic youngster who loved food, sometimes plowing through groceries faster than his parents could put them in the fridge.

They remembered him as a rambunctious and precocious child who came home from the hospital flashing the same infectious smile he’d carry for the rest of his life.

He was “always ready to just have fun and be a playful, loving guy,” said his stepsister Tonya. “He helped the family to smile.”

Proud of his Ecuadorian and Jamaican heritage, Loor-Walters aspired to own homes in both countries.

He also dreamed of becoming a cook and owning his own restaurant. A relative recounted Tahj’s first attempt at cooking for his mother: He made undercooked chicken, rice and corn.

Loor-Walters was shot multiple times on July 28 when he rode his bicycle up to a cream-coloured car in the parking lot of Yorkwoods Plaza.

“When the incident happened, whoever did this to him, they decided they were going to kill him right away so he would die alone,” his grandmother said.

But God gave the family Tahj for 17 more “wonderful days,” she said. Family and friends kept vigil at his bedside at Sunnybrook hospital, singing and praying over him.

On Aug. 13, the family prayed, asking God to “let Thy will be done,” a relative recounted during a eulogy. As they uttered “Amen,” Tahj’s heart stopped beating.

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